212. The Origin of Information
Often evolution theorists criticize those with a theistic view (belief in a creator God) for intellectual laziness. They assume that Christian scientists use God to explain any gap between the observation and the unknown. “Since we don’t know how it happened, God must’ve done it.” They say Christians trust in the “God of the gap.”
But Dr. John Lenox argues that it is not what Christian scientists claim. He is a retired professor in Oxford. He has a Ph.D. in Mathematics, Science, and Philosophy. In his book “Has Science Buried God?” he says, “science done on atheistic presuppositions will lead to the same results as science done on theistic presuppositions.” When an organism in question is analyzed using scientific “methodology,” believing it is evolved or created will not affect the result. In fact, we should judge the validity of each view based on how well it explains our ultimate question, ”Where did life come from?”
As the studies on the human genome and theory of information have advanced recently, it is now commonly believed that life must have originated from “information.” Because even the most primitive organism has DNA, which is carefully arranged information or codes. The greatest weakness of the evolution view is its inability to explain the origin of information.
To believe that life originated from a primitive material purely by “chance” is too difficult. Evolution theorists argue that if enough time is given, DNA codes could’ve lined up on their own. But the evidence shows that DNA is a complex database of digital information, and the only source we know of such language-like complexity is intelligence. The best analogy is an author writing a beautiful poem on paper with an ink pen. The information is “carried” by the ink and the carefully arranged letters on the paper. But where did the information come from? Information is not only invisible, but it is immaterial. Even if we assume things have evolved from “materials,” we can only explain the carriers of information, not where it came from.
John Lennox concludes that this origin of information is not difficult to explain if we turn to the Christian view: “In the Beginning, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) Here, the beginning refers to before the creation of space and time. The “Word” is Logos in greek, and greek philosophers believed it to be the principle of life or divine “intelligence.” As we know, “Word” is information.
